Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all have been lucky enough to have had at least some of the gorgeous weather we’ve had here lately.

Here’s my week:

 

 

I prettied up my pages with some washi tape. I picked up a total of 13 rolls from PrettyTape and another 16 from the SewingPost on Etsy. I also finally got some of the cute magnetic bookmarks everyone’s been putting on their pages. Design-wise, you may notice a lot more sticky notes than usual. I had this bright idea to use only black ink for a cleaner look, but I ended up forgetting halfway through and used color anyway. Having half in color and the other half in black bugged me. Turns out I like seeing a mix of colors on my pages because I can see a mix of thing going on in my life. Anyway, I decided to use sticky notes to cover up most of the black ink.

So what did I do this past week?

I worked out a lot. I’m talking 40 minutes twice a day some of the days. I practically lived in workout clothes which didn’t bug me one bit because they are incredibly comfortable and quite cute. Each week, I try to write down the Tone It Up schedule, but I have to be honest, I don’t always follow it. Most of their online workouts are designed to be repeated about 3 times, but I have a tendency to not repeat them. Sticking with the 10 workouts I have on DVD keeps me on track more.

I was able to write a ton of blog posts for last week. I think I had a post just about every day.

I had a few meetings one of which included my performance evaluation. One of the only negatives is my lack of enthusiasm for public speaking. The whole department seems perplexed by it. I assume that seeing as my mom (who also works on campus) is so incredibly outgoing, the idea that I might be incredibly introverted doesn’t make sense, but in any event, that’s who I am, and I don’t see that changing. I do see value in pushing yourself to try new things, and I do. However, I’m happy with who I am as a person. It’s taken a long time to be comfortable with being an introvert, and I don’t feel like I should be forced to change that.

Somewhere during the week, I managed to find time to watch a few movies and finish 3 books:

• The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt – I honestly expected more from this book. I didn’t feel like the story every really picked up enough. It was like I was stuck always reading the first few pages of a book where the story builds and then it just ended.
• Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxnreider – This was one of those books I started and never got around to finishing. I’m trying to finish those books, so I picked this one up. It wasn’t any different than any other organizing book I’ve read. Actually a lot of it was just the author saying  something like “Well this is what I did, and you should too.” Maybe I would have gotten more out of it if I had 2 weeks to devote to clearing everything out of my house room by room, staging it in the backyard, cleaning everything top to bottom, and replacing only the necessities, but let’s face it, I have a life.
• Drive by Daniel Pink – I found this book difficult to read which is saying something because I love Psychology and self-help books and this is a bit of both. If I didn’t have to return this book, I likely wouldn’t have pushed myself to finish it so soon. It was pretty dry with one study after another. Do I think it would be nice to work in some Motivation 3.0 world? Sure. Is it realistic to hope my office will some day get rid of their vacation policies or let me work from wherever I want? No, because my office is based on the fact that people are in the office. I don’t work in a retail environment, but imagine if you went to a store and no one was there because they were working from a coffee shop down the street… His theories have science to back them up, but unless I’m working in some fancy office job that doesn’t involve interacting with the public, it just isn’t feasible, and that was the extent of a large portion of the work.

Moving on to the weekend…

Saturday, I met up with a friend for piercings. I wanted to get my cartilage pierced. I had gotten my right ear done a few years ago, and wanted to get the other side done to balance it out. Total count now is at 7. I’d love to get more, but I have to stay professional. We followed piercings up with drinks and dinner at Chevy’s. {Oh, and I found my friend’s lost cat. She hadn’t come home, but with my “Cat Whisperer” abilities, of course she came back and I spotted her in the yard.}

Sunday was Mother’s Day. I made my mom a cute card out of washi tape and scrapbook paper. I’m not normally one to make cards, but I didn’t pick one up ahead of time because I didn’t plan on being out most of the day on Saturday. I worried that it’d come off tacky and look like I forgot Mother’s Day, but  in the end, it turned out really cute, and I went into super creative mode. The card even had slits in it to hold the check I gave her. {I offered to buy her something fun, but she asked for money.}

School-wise, I turned in all my assignments on time. I am actually really happy for the work I did. We had to post our evaluation instruments for the course we’ve designed. I was really scared that I wouldn’t have time to finish it {I really should stop waiting until the last minute.}, but I actually enjoyed this assignment and I got into a groove and worked away. Of course I’m not sure whether the groove was due to actually enjoying the assignment, watching tv, or wine. All I know is it got done, and for once I’m proud of my work this semester.

Well, that was my wonderful week. How was yours?